Phonetic Alphabet?

[gothwalk]

What's the best way to go about learning the phonetic alphabet? I've just realised, trying to explain in text to a Canadian colleague, that trying to render a Northern Irish accent in the mundane alphabet is wholly impossible. The greeting that you'd write as "How's you?" gets mangled into "Hyee's yi-e?", and still doesn't convey either the sound or the fact that it sounds pleasant.

Comments

[kehoea.livejournal.com]

Another thing is that Nina probably knows the basics already, since in civilised countries it's used as an important part of language teaching, and since good dictionaries published in Europe (including the UK) use it as the pronunciation guide, and I'm quite certain she hasn't been working on a "ask-Drew-every-awkward-thing" principle in learning English. Which is not to say she knows all the crazy stuff, like how to transcribe a glottal stop, or an ejective click.